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Saturday, May 13, 2017

The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall

The Seventh Most Important Thing

by

Shelley Pearsall

One kid. One crime. One chance to make things right.

It
was a bitterly cold day when Arthur T. Owens grabbed a brick and hurled
it at the trash picker. Arthur had his reasons, and the brick hit the
Junk Man in the arm, not the head. But none of that matters to the
judge—he is ready to send Arthur to juvie for the foreseeable future.
Amazingly, it’s the Junk Man himself who offers an alternative: 120
hours of community service . . . working for him.

Arthur is
given a rickety shopping cart and a list of the Seven Most Important
Things: glass bottles, foil, cardboard, pieces of wood, light bulbs,
coffee cans, and mirrors. He can’t believe it—is he really supposed to
rummage through people’s trash? But it isn’t long before Arthur realizes
there’s more to the Junk Man than meets the eye, and the “trash” he’s
collecting is being transformed into something more precious than anyone
could imagine. . . .

Biography

Shelley Pearsall grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where she began
writing stories in her bedroom closet as a child. She sent her first
story to a New York publishing house at the age of thirteen. Although
the manuscript was never published, its themes of survival and freedom
ultimately became the inspiration for Pearsall’s first published novel,
TROUBLE DON’T LAST, written twenty years later. Click here for more information about Shelley Pearsall.